"Orta, the Lord's watercolour, seems painted on silk, with the Sacro Monte towering above it; its noble promenade flaked by close buildings, the silent piazza and the Austere facaded behind the foliage of the horse-chestnuts, and, facing it, the Isle of San Giulio, resembling Dante's airy purgatory, hesitant between water and the heaven". This is how Piero Chiara, the writer of the lakes, exhalted the silence of Orta and this lake. A retreating silence upon whitch the local have spun their ancient legends.